Let’s Play

If you’ve never heard of Paranormal, it’s an indie game that first appeared in late-2012 and was advertised as a “procedurally-generated horror experience.” Another way they described it was as a “random haunting” game. Basically, the scenario was that you were a guy who felt that there was something other-worldly going on at his house and decided to film it in that “found footage” sort of way, and each playthrough would vary a bit because the events that happened would be selected at random, encouraging replayability.

Since its initial release, the game has been overhauled rather extensively. In late-2014, an upgraded version was released that contained two new “tapes” (or Chapters) to add to the game: Paranormal: The Room and Paranormal: The Town.

This video here is a complete playthrough of Paranormal: The House and ends with what I think is the “good ending.”

Please let me know if you enjoy this, because if you do I would be happy to record the other two chapters! :)

In the previous volume of my Long Play of The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds, we worked our way through the Light World dungeons and confronted Draegar, who upon his defeat told us that he had been controlled by a powerful sorcerer and then drew us into the frozen parallel world. This volume picks up with our journey in this strange, cold land. Structurally, this plays out a lot like the Light World/Dark World dynamic from Zelda: A Link to the Past (or Parallel Worlds, for that matter), but right now we do not possess the ability to return to our original land.

The world is sprawling and complex. Unfortunately, we did miss a key item in the Light World (the Cane of Byrna), and while this is not essential, it is one of the only things that makes the Nabooru’s Hole dungeon bearable. Without it, we’d fall victim to the myriad of spike traps that we have no choice but to cross. The only feasible way I see around it would have been to save that dungeon for later and have a lot of hearts as well as Blue Potions to use. In any event, rather than start the game over, I entered a cheat code in the emulator to unlock the item. I feel this was the right decision to make! :)

Like with the previous installment, I’ve put in a chapter select menu so that you can navigate this video’s four chapters.

I hope you enjoy it! Please subscribe and, most importantly, have fun!

Here’s the truth: the Kirby series is just one I never really got into.

Way back in 1992, though, I did get a copy of Kirby’s Dream Land for the original Game Boy when it was brand-new and, surprisingly, beat the game in one sitting of about 30 minutes. I recall really enjoying the game, but being disappointed at how it ended so quickly and so easily. I have to wonder if this is the reason that I never really did much else with the series?

Nonetheless, I plan to remedy this. I’ve been playing some of the games here recently, and this first video (above) is a live-stream of Kirby’s Dream Land where what was meant to be a very casual run ended up being a 20-minute (approximately!) no-death completion of the game!

After that, I graduated up to a game I had only maybe played for a few minutes one time in my life: Kirby’s Adventure. This 1993 sequel really ramped things up, taking the style and formula that worked great in the original greyscale game and bringing it to the NES. It took me a while to embrace the concept of swallowing enemies to gain their powers, but once I learned to do that more the depth of the game really hit me.

In this first half of the game, I tackle the first four worlds and bungle my way through the challenges. For me, this game has been tough, but it is a lot of fun when compared to the first title.

Things really heat up though in the second half of the game. Yogurt Yard, Orange Ocean, Rainbow Resort, and the Fountain of Dreams all end up being very challenging locations. It also was surprising to me to see that King Dedede wasn’t the true “bad guy” of the game, and I found the final battle against Nightmare to be very challenging and very interesting as well.

Definitely, Nightmare has this odd Dracula thing going on.

Anyway, so far, I’ve been having a lot of fun. Next up, I’ll take on Kirby’s Dream Land 2 to see where things go from here.

For a while now, people have been asking me to share some videos that would showcase what my work-in-progress fan game, Zelda: Sword of Moria, is like in action. Very recently I released Demo 2.5 (a private build that adds some things since the public 2.0 update), so this felt like a really good opportunity to get some video recording of the game done!

Here, I show you the current in-game intro when you begin a new game and then pick up where we left off at the end of my Demo 1.0 playthrough, with Link having returned to the small town of Sinder to meet with his parents and get (at last!) a sword from his father. Given the length of this update, I had to break the video recording up into two parts, so in this first part we explore Sinder and a large portion of Eastern Calatia, gather some needed items and upgrades, and make our way into the mountains to Eldin Shrine. After beating the mid-boss and realizing we cannot progress further, we go to the Great Thicket and locate the Roc’s Well where the Roc’s Feather (as you probably guessed!) is hidden. Finally, we gather a couple more items from the overworld and return to Eldin Shrine to visit the upper floors and rescue Princess Zelda!

The second video will focus on a bit more exploration of new areas and then the new dungeon of Caltaka Roo, a great pyramid in the western part of Calta Canyon. Stay tuned!

If you want to give the latest public demo (2.0, which features the content from this particular video in it) a shot, head below to download a copy to try out!:

Now, I know what you might be thinking: Over four hours for just one video?! Well, you don’t need to worry too much about it, because I’ve carefully created a chapter-select menu for the video that breaks it up into for thematic segments, and I think this makes it effectively like watching a long movie. You can see it in parts and take it all in. This is a very long game, so this is a very efficient way to showcase it!

The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds is a total hack of the SNES classic Zelda: A Link to the Past that was released by designers SePH and Euclid back in 2006. While certainly a good game and a very impressive hack, it wasn’t without its flaws and balance issues. Many complained that it was extremely hard to play and very frustrating without using save-states and other emulation tools. So, to correct a lot of this, PuzzleDude released an upgraded version called Zelda: Parallel Worlds Remodeled in 2012.

In this first volume, we effectively go through all of the “Light World” content through the battle with Draegor. Who’s Draegor, you ask? Well, you’ll have to watch the game’s introduction, but he was the king of Hyrule’s regent who overthrew him and became maddened with a desire to climb the Parallel Tower in search for the power of the Triforce. So, after we get through the introduction, we do a ton of exploring, clear three major dungeons, and have an epic battle that concludes with us being thrust into a darker, frozen world!

I’ve also been streaming some of Ys II: Chronicles Plus via Twitch, and will eventually have that cleaned up and presented on YouTube. Meanwhile, you can follow my Channel there and scour the archives to see whatever Ys II streams you might have missed!

When looking around Steam recently, I came across a new survival horror game called Astray, and decided it looked good enough to pick up for the low asking price ($6.99 as of this article). The game was released on February 3, 2015 by an indie group called Aegon Games. So, what do I think about this one?

Astray appears to be set in January 1909 and involves the unnamed player going into the English countryside to visit his uncle’s “museum for the supernatural” to find out why no one has heard from him in several weeks. As you might suspect, things aren’t going all that well when you arrive and you must embark on a mission to locate your uncle and deal with a more sinister, unknown evil. The museum idea is pretty well thought out in the initial portion of the game because the player has to explore three themed exhibits (Atlantis, Egypt, and Demonography) to solve a series of (relatively easy) puzzles in order to obtain the keys required to open a large locked door in the museum’s main hall. Along the way, various notes and journal entries are discovered that provide a growing understanding of what’s really going on.

I found, however, that most of the puzzles were fairly easy to solve and, in the case that if the player should happen to get stuck, reading various clues located nearby practically gave the solution away in most cases. The harder puzzles in the game seem to be more physics related, and the couple of times I got “stuck” (stuck being used generously, as in reality I was only lost for a few moments or so at most) it was simply because I was over-thinking things a bit.

Once the three keys are obtained, there is one more major themed area the player will explore (a planetarium) before proceeding to the final areas of the game. Thus, the game is rather short, able to be completed in around two hours. Also, although the game does a good job of providing an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty, there is only one main threat in the game and it is very easy to avoid it. Although you may be in for a bit of a scare when first encountering it in the (spoiler?!) Demonography section, the suspense will wear off by the next few times you come across it.

At the end of the day, the game is a good first attempt. I would like to see more exhibits added (maybe a second or third door that requires keys to unlock) because I feel that the game excels at the puzzle side of things more than anything else, so I hope that one day they either add more to the game or take some of these ideas and make a much more expansive “sequel” or successor.

Meanwhile, you can get the game for $6.99 via Steam if you are interested. I also suggest you watch my two-part play through (included in this review) so that you can see how the game handles for yourself!

Services like YouTube and the evolving nature of our multimedia technology create a drive to constantly improve our media quality to deliver the absolute best entertainment possible. In the last three or so years of producing media content I’ve always pushed the envelope, and now that I have a display and system that can record and encode at Ultra High-Definition quality, I believe that it’s time to start stepping my game up.

Recently, a name for a new line of videos came to me: Retro Play 4K. This stems from back in October 2014 when I experimented with rendering Castlevania: Lament of Innocence for the PlayStation 2 at six times the native resolution to produce crystal clear quality for YouTube. I started to wonder: What if I took the time to showcase certain retro games (10+ years old) in very high resolutions to show what they could look like if rendered with modern technology.

The result in this first video of Terranigma for the Super Nintendo stands for itself. Even on a non-4K screen, the viewer should be able to see a much crisper picture and greater color fidelity. Further, most pixelation is gone here and the image looks smoother and of production quality. The intro to the video shows the original display resolution (around 320×240), so when compared to the actual video in this production, it’s quite the stark contrast.

But why is Terranigma the first game to be part of this experiment? Well, I have a love for Quintet and their games, and since I’ve already done full playthroughs of ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Illusion of Gaia, it made sense to me to go ahead and continue with the next game in the series.

Terranigma, which was released in Europe and Japan in 1996, tells a wonderful story that continues the theme of death and rebirth from the other games. In this introductory video, we explore the village of Crysta which soon befalls a strange and terrible fate, and then set out into the odd world beyond the town gate on a quest to save our people and “restore the Earth.” Here, we visit two of the five towers that we will eventually have to set foot in, and get accustomed to the game’s general play style.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy as this great, under-appreciated SNES action-RPG is rendered for you in stunning quality for you to get immersed in!